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Black Tongue
Marcus "Black Tongue" Morgan is a fictional character from the Wild Cards series of books. History Due to his mother's allergy to many if not most fur-bearing animals, the only pets Marcus had during his childhood were reptiles of various kinds mostly snakes. Over time he developed an affinity for them. Eventually he managed to acquire, but not tame, a coral snake. The snake bit him, triggering the turning of his card, whereupon he developed his snakelike traits. This caused him to become a pariah in his family, and he fled to New York City and Jokertown to find a life there. In New York, bereft of friends and funds, Marcus briefly tried joining the joker gang known as the Demon Princes, participating in a raid on a small pack of rival Werewolves. Soon after he quickly (and falsely) became the prime suspect of the murder of former American Hero contestant Joe Twitch, whereupon he took to hiding in the sewers and alleys of Jokertown until his name could be cleared. Eventually, the Oddity came to him, offering him the keys to a hideaway for him to use as a base of operations, choosing him as a successor before they retired. As a protector of jokers, Marcus found himself enlisted by Father Squid to assist with investigating numerous joker disappearances from the streets of Jokertown. During their search, they were themselves captured by the very kidnappers they sought to track, and were taken to Talas, Kazakhstan, where they were forced to participate in deadly cage matches against other jokers in an illicit joker fight club. Marcus did well in these bouts, shocked by how his reluctance to participate was giving way to feelings of hatred towards his opponents, but he overcame these sensations when he was pitted against Father Squid in a duel to the death, and refused to kill the priest. The fight club's patron Baba Yaga lashed at Marcus, but Father Squid intercepted the ace's attack, saving Marcus at the cost of his own life. Driven to fury, Marcus retaliated and then fled the fight club in the company of a young Ukrainian woman, Olena Davydenko, one of a number of women offered to victors as prizes for good performance. Initially seeking to put distance between themselves and the fight club, they soon learned that the chaos behind them had begun to grow into scene of nightmare. As they fled Talas, they encountered Olena's mobster father, who took them back into the heart of the rapidly decaying city to retrieve something from Baba Yaga's former base of operations. When this effort failed, Marcus and Olena turned to helping refugees flee the horrors consuming Talas. Their headlong flight eventually led them to Baikonur where Marcus found himself siding with members of the Committee, fighting to hold back a horrific crowd of once-human monsters while a small group went to end the threat in Talas. After the Talas incident, Marcus returned to the scene of the fight club to retrieve the prayer bench that had once been Father Squid and take it back to Our Lady of Perpetual Misery the priest's old church. Wild Card Traits Black Tongue has a snakelike body, and snake venom which he applies by striking his target with his extendible reptilian tongue. Appearance He is described as having the body of a fit African-American male from the waist up, the rest being the body of a coral snake. Personality Marcus is very bitter for his age, and resigned to life as a loner. Inexperienced with women, Marcus is uncertain how his serpentine lower half responds to arousal. Selected Reading * * * References Category:Animal-based characters Category:POV characters